


The Prank

by DixieDale



Series: The Life and Times of One Peter Newkirk [37]
Category: Clan O'Donnell - Fandom, Hogan's Heroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-16 12:04:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14811029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DixieDale/pseuds/DixieDale
Summary: It was just a prank, just to see if they couldn't get Caeide to break down and laugh at their combined foolishness.  Their time in camp had exposed them to plenty of the more coarse, ribald forms of humor, though the East End certainly had its fair share as well, and the countryside had its own share of lewd jokes and stories, none to be taken seriously.  Now, their misplaced sense of humor and a foolish prank based on a exasperated comment Peter had made during Andrew's Dance goes dreadfully awry, sending a devastated Caeide into a whirlwind flashback of a vile wartime experience.  It will take all of them working together to bring her the comfort and support she needs.





	The Prank

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: fairly graphic description or language, war-time brutality described graphically (if briefly).

They'd intended no harm. Andrew had become accustomed to asking Caeide questions about some of the odd, well, sometimes more than odd, exotic information he found in the library, while Peter would look on either amused or appalled, depending on how outrageous the material was. {"Odd, that it turns out I'm the more, shall we say, conservative, of the lot, though Coura 'ad 'inted at that in 'er letters, to be sure."}

Andrew was equally accustomed to having her answer his questions or comment on his findings in a calm, serious manner, even if her mouth did twitch very strangely sometimes. Peter, on the other hand, was amazed how she kept a straight face at all at some of the things Andrew came up with. During one such session, when Andrew handed her some odd looking 'whatever' out of the 'trinket' chest to explain, Caeide had seemed to lose her voice for a couple of minutes, before she licked her lips, took a deep breath and said, "Weeeellllll, Andrew . ." Peter had to leave the room to keep from losing it entirely. Of course, he DID stand just outside the door to hear her explanation; HE didn't have a clue, either, and thought he might need to know if it showed up unexpected-like some time, what with Andrew being Andrew. He wondered sometimes if anything could cause her to lose control and just burst out laughing helplessly.

It was up in the sheep barn that inspiration struck, well, struck twice actually. During the night of Andrew's Dance, as the three of them now called it, clearly pronouncing the capital letter, Peter had answered yet another of what Peter considered very ill-timed inquiries from Andrew, during a highlight of the night, with an outburst, "well, 'ow do you bloody well think it feels? Like that bloody great ram of 'ers is 'aving 'is way with me, that's 'ow it feels, Andrew, and thank you so much for asking! Now will you just bloody well get on with it??" Not that Peter wasn't thoroughly and enthusiastically caught up in the moment, just, well, as Caeide had cautioned Andrew, Peter wasn't all that great at verbalizing in bed, not really what you might call smooth, no, not at all smooth.

In the sheep barn, Peter had been explaining to Andrew what the holding stall, with its leg restraints and neck and back bar was for, to keep the ewes in position for Duggan, their big ram when they were trying for a specific mating, rather than the more general have-at-em allowed in the pasture among the stock. During the ensuing conversation, they were clowning around, first in jest, then as they each caught the spirit, a bit more in earnest. First inspiration - Andrew had convinced Peter he should SHOW him how the holding stall worked, Peter taking the place of the ewe. They'd finally ruefully accepted that the human configuration was enough different than a ewe's that none of the restraints really worked. It was in the discovery of that fact that the neck bar had left an obvious red mark across Peter's neck and shoulders, one they knew they'd have a hard time explaining back at the house. Peter did have the passing thought, though, that the next time that interfering parson from the village started giving him lip about 'corrupting of an innocent young man', he might just share who seemed to be corrupting whom around here! 

It was later, on the way back to the house, when the second inspiration hit - between the two of them they came up with the idea of trying to prank Caeide, seeing how far they could go in spinning their tale, but with the real Duggan playing a role, to see how long she could keep her composure. They worked the ridiculous tale back and forth down the path, elaborating on it til it was a real masterpiece, they thought. Yes, the boys could get overly carried away, even without the benefit of liquor. Andrew had a certain, what Caeide called, 'unbridled enthusiasm', and Peter's tendency to indulge him usually had Peter five steps down a path he'd never intended to step foot on, before he realized the perils involved.

By the time they reached the house, laughing loudly, much in harmony with each other, they had a bet on for how long she could hold out before breaking down laughing, or if not that, teasing them about the made-up encounter in some way, maybe asking if she was supposed to include Duggan in the seating for Sunday dinner, since they were on such good terms with him.

That evening, after dinner, when everyone had said their goodnights and headed for their rooms, Peter hesitantly asked Caeide if he could talk to her about something. Taking in his downcast eyes, slumped shoulders, and shamed expression, she had to wonder. If she'd spent time in Stalag 13, she'd have suspected, no she'd have known she was being set up; she'd have known this for the special pitiful sadsack 'I did something dreadful, and I'm dreadfully sorry,' act Hogan had him use to get around Klink on so many occasions; Andrew was quite familiar with the pose, but Caeide had never seen the proud, stubborn man she knew and loved so well look like this, and she was confused and concerned. This wasn't one of the masks he'd worn when she'd known him before.

"Of course, love, want to come in now?" she held open the door to her room.

"Not 'ere, in my room, please. We both need to talk to you, Andrew and I; I think we may 'ave . . . well, we just need to talk."

Frowning, now, wondering what on earth they might have gotten involved in to cause such a dramatic change in the tall Brit, she proceeded into his room, and at his bequest, took a seat in the tall wingback chair. Andrew was standing at the side, just far enough away that she could see him, see his sweet innocent face, but not his eyes, and he went to sit on the side of the bed as she got settled in the chair. Peter dropped to sit on the floor beside her, and rested the top of his body against her legs, face turned away and down, keeping to the role he was splaying. Scamp that he was, he and Andrew had made sure he had a loose shirt on, unbuttoned enough that if she tried, and they fully intended she would, she could fold the collar back to see his neck. 

"We didn't mean anything, really, it just got out of hand, but on the way back, we thought you probably wouldn't like it, and since you'd see the marks on Peter's neck, we thought we should tell you first," stuttered Andrew. Her eyes got big, and she reached out for his collar, but Peter stopped her hand with his, saying, "no, better let us tell you first."

Haltingly, he related that he'd showed Andrew the holding stall earlier in the week, and when they made the trip today, somehow (SOMEHOW??) Peter had ended up in it, securely fastened. Andrew interjected that originally he'd intended to just tease Peter, then thought it might be kinda fun that way, but then thought of what Peter had said during the night of the Dance, and thought that might be even more interesting.

"What did he say, Andrew, I don't know that I recall." She thought she'd remembered everything about that rather extraordinary night, but nothing that seemed to apply here. Andrew told her, and she caught her breath.

"Please, you didn't try . . ."

Andrew, as if eager to reassure her, "well, Duggan wasn't really keen," and she heaved a deep sigh of relief, "but then I remembered the honey we keep up there for dressing wounds, and it didn't take much of that to get him interested. Did you ever notice how long a tongue Duggan has?? " he asked her earnestly.

Peter broke in, lifting his head to glare at Andrew, "well I can tell you exactly how long a tongue the bloody bastard 'as, curled around all the way from the back to front, after all that 'oney you poured everywhere, and then, when 'e'd gotten all of that, and not a bit shy about it, I'll tell you that! 'e started poking around searching for more and got the whole bloody thing up me 'e did!" They were waiting expectantly for her to start shaking with the giggles, and Peter thought it was coming soon, for the shaking had certainly started.

Unknown to them, their nonsense had opened a tiny door in her mind, a door behind which she had locked one of the most awful things she had ever seen, something she had hid away, hopefully never to think of again. Now, their story had it replaying in her mind, Peter and Andrew each playing roles in the nightmare, and she thought she felt something break inside of her. She'd thought to keep them safe; how could she have failed like this? She wanted to stop listening, she didn't dare stop listening, nightmare replacing reality, reality spinning off somewhere into the night. {"Please, please no, let them have come to their senses in time, they were here, safe, they must have, please, please,"} she kept repeating to herself, over and over and over, her mind lost in what had been. The room was spinning in front of her, images of Andrew and Peter overlaying other images, and she sickened.

Time to make the next push, thought Peter, surely this'll put her over the top, "then, Andrew gets the bloody ram in position and smacks 'im along side the rump, and I can tell you just how long the rest of 'im is, too!" Still no reaction from Caeide other than the shaking; Peter was frowning now, she couldn't possibly hold out much longer! He looked over at Andrew, questioningly; where did they go wrong? Was the delivery so poor as that, that she couldn't even be amused at their silliness? Andrew shrugged his shoulders, looking bewildered. Then Andrew gave what they had intended would be the finale, though neither had thought the tale would make it nearly this far without her giving way to either helpless laughter or hitting them over their head for their nonsense, "took him forever to get done; Peter kept telling me to have him finish it, but I don't know what makes a ram finish! Anyway, he finally did, and I got Peter unhooked, but we thought maybe we might need to tell you since the holding bar left marks," the latter in a virtuous, aren't we good boys for telling you, voice.

With shaking hands, praying she'd see nothing, that she was imagining all of this, she gently touched him, her love, her heart, tentatively stroking the back of his head, his neck, pushed back his collar, then the shoulders of his shirt; across his neck, across his shoulders was a mark that indeed would match the outline of the holding bar from the sheep barn. With a deep moaning cry, she slid to the floor, arms clutching at Peter, who had leaned to catch her when he felt her start to fall. She was looking at him with wild, staring eyes, tears streaming, mouth trembling, and she twisted away from him into a small heap, making sounds he was sure he never wanted to hear again.

"Caeide? Caeide, luv, please, stop. Whatever is it? Caeide, it's just a tale, a prank, just something we made up. Luv, what is it?" Peter frantically. He was trying to pull her up into her arms, Andrew now kneeling beside them, not having any idea what to do to help. Suddenly, she broke away, staggeredto her feet and got to the loo just in time to vomit violently into the stool, again, again, like she'd never stop. Peter and Andrew kneel, one on each side of her, looking at each other with sheer bewildered terror in their eyes. When she finally stopped, and collapsed to the floor, gasping, shaking, arms clutching her stomach, Peter wiped her face and carried her back to his bedroom; she refused to be put in the bed, making him set her in the big chair again. She sat, crying, shaking, for a long time, while they sat beside her, helplessly, til she recovered enough to speak. Reality, memory, all whirled around her, one indistinguishable from the other.

Finally, in a tiny voice, raspy from the strain her throat had just undergone, "I've seen it, you know."

Peter looked at Andrew and then back to her, and asked hesitantly, "you've seen what, luv?"

Slowly, in a thick voice, "In Germany, on one of my last assignments. I'd been wounded, Davis as well, though he had been able to pull me to the shadows of a barn alongside a farmhouse. We were there when the Nazi's took over. Davis gagged me, to keep me from screaming out at them, and held me so I couldn't try to help. It would have done no good, only gotten the two of us killed, I know that but . . . They'd trained their dogs well; the dogs raped the woman, the two small children, a boy and a girl, before the men shot all three of them. The farmer, though, he'd fought them, killed two of them. Him, they tied into position, and brought in his big bull from the field, and somehow managed to get the bull aroused, and to push into him. It seemed like the screams lasted forever, like the bull lasted forever. When it finished and pulled out, it ripped him open, blood, everything else, all falling out on the ground, him laying there, broken."

She looked up at Peter, eyes wide and unseeing; she was in shock, he now knew, rocking back and forth, staring blindly into the air, "I locked it all away, wanted never to see that, think of that ever again. Peter, Peter, please??" He looked at Andrew, who returned his gaze; they were sick with the knowledge of what she'd seen, of what their unthinking prank, really just a lewd joke expanded into a tall tale, had caused her to remember. When she started to cry softly again, rocking back and forth,arms folded around herself, he became really frightened. She was their rock, and she was crumbling! Pushing her into Andrew's frightened arms, he gasped, "stay with her, I've got to get 'elp!" 

Maude and Marisol responded to his frantic knocks immediately, and when he told them, haltingly of their foolishness and the results, the women looked at each other, swallowed deeply and Maude told him, "there's hardly anything I can say to you that you and Andrew aren't already saying to yourself, other than you couldn't possibly have known." Then, as if she couldn't help herself, she burst forth, "not that it makes it alright; it was a bloody stupid dangerous idea to even toy with, even as pretense, and a bloody stupid prank and hopefully this'll teach both of you to actually THINK before you try the next one." She heaved a deep sigh, and looked over at Marisol, who was looking at Peter as if she wanted to box his ears. "But for now, leave her to us; don't go too far, we'll need you soon enough. Be prepared to spend the night in her bed, both of you. You served up her worst nightmare tonight, and furnished it with both your faces; you two are the only ones to get her safely past this."

The two women went into Peter's room, dismissed Andrew, telling him to go find Peter and for the two of them to get a stiff drink, "ONE, mind you. We'll need you later, and NOT drunk!" They hurried to the woman huddled in front of the chair, getting her out of her stained clothing, into a warm bath, freshly dressed, and with a strong drink of her own. They talked, the three of them, some of nightmares, some of the unthinking, unfathomable ways of men, and some of the need for healing.

Eventually she regained her calm, her mind finally sorting out what was history, what was reality, what was just a foolish story told by two men well old enough to know better, one that under different circumstances she would have easily recognized as a tall tale and been amused by their foolishness and ingenuity and not in any way confused with reality. End be it, Peter was safe, Andrew was still their own, not a betrayer, her family was still . . .

She still ached inside, she feared, no, she knew nightmares would follow, seeing Andrew in place of the Nazi commander; seeing Peter in place of that farmer; it wasn't real, and she had to get past that. Blast those boys!

Maude and Marisol made her take another drink, got her tucked into her bed, lights turned low, but the room certainly not dark. When they left, she removed the nightgown they'd so kindly dressed her in and dropped it by the side of the bed; they'd no reason to know she never slept in one, unless in the cold of winter and then only if alone, and it was high summer now. A nightgown was a pleasant frill, not something to suffer with thru during the night!

They went to retrieve the culprits from Andrew's room, where they sat dejectedly next to each other on the bed, shoulders touching for comfort, empty glasses in hand. Marisol tilted her head at them, "did you have just the one drink, then?" and when they nodded yes, told them to pour one more, and drink it down, then get changed to their nightclothes and join Caeide. Their eyes got big.

"Don't think she'd want us anywhere near her, not now," said Peter solemnly, though with real longing in his eyes. Andrew just looked glumly apprehensive.

"Boys," Maude told them gently, "your faces are going to be in her nightmares tonight; you need to be there to bring her back to reality; show her they really ARE just nightmares. She has to know you both are safe; that's the real nightmare for her, that you, Peter, were betrayed and lost, and you, Andrew, the trusted one, are the betrayer and thus also lost to her. You have to get her past that. It won't be easy, I imagine, but I think you both owe her that, don't you? Peter, you are dearest of all things to her in this life. Andrew, she trusted you enough to give Peter into your safekeeping."

{"Funny," } both Peter and Andrew thought later about that last statement, {"I'd thought it was the other way around!"}

"She'll need both of you; she is strong and won't let this knock her down, but for a bit, you need to be strong for her as well."

She was half-dozing, afraid to let herself fall asleep for fear of the nightmares she was sure would come, when she heard the door open, and footsteps approach the bed.

"Easy, luv, we're joining you, if you've no objections," Peter said as he turned back the covers and slipped in behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and settling her head against his shoulder.

She looked at him over her shoulder, "a nightshirt, Peter? In my bed, and in the middle of summer too?"

"Well, after all that's 'appened, thought you might prefer it that way," he said ruefully, "and with Andrew being 'ere as well . . ."

"Andrew?, she said, startled, remembering the 'we're joining you', then looked forward to see the quiet hesitant form standing there.

"Maude said we should both be here, but if you want me to leave. . .", he said in a small voice.

Deeply, she sighed to herself. Her boys, her men - heaven help her, when did they BOTH become hers? Peter, well, from that first year, of course, Andrew, maybe back in the camp, when he had held her so gently, acting, as he told her, as Peter's shoulder. They were going to be the death of her, or her salvation, and right now she wouldn't have laid odds on which.

"Come along, laddie, here to the front of me. The shirt can stay if you really want it to, but it's not necessary, and Peter's getting shed of his, AREN'T you, Peter??"

"Yes, Caeide, luv," he chuckled and pulling the nightshirt off, dropped it at the side of the bed. At the feel of his familiar body against hers, she began to relax. Then with an encouraging nod from Peter, Andrew removed the dress shirt he used instead of a night shirt (one of Peter's, which reached halfway to his knees), and slid in under the covers, putting his arms around her from the front, and let her pull him close. She'd never felt him close like this, without clothing between them, except in that one dream, but somehow, this felt right, and any remaining resistance within her melted. Cradled between them, she slid into a deep sleep. Whenever the nightmares started to come, and they did, she'd feel them close to her, warm, safe, and the nightmares would lose their strength and would fade away. 

In the early morning, Maude and Marisol quietly opened the door to see if anyone was awake for morning tea. If the sight of three piles of nightclothes on the floor, and three obviously unclothed intertwined bodies in the bed disturbed them, you'd not know it by the knowing smiles they exchanged.


End file.
